Major card upgrade – November 10, 2009
We welcomed several new card designers this year and expanded our selection of 5×7 folded and 4×8 cards to over 200! You can see them at http://cards.smugmug.com.
You can of course order a card with just a photo on the front and no design. Ordering help. Or you can design your own cards from scratch on your computer. Here are the guidelines.
With this release, pros can price and sell cards for a profit. If you’re a pro, you’ll need to choose EZ Prints as the lab for the gallery where you’ll sell finished cards for your clients. Then you’ll see the fields in the pricing tool to enter prices:
Three important new features:
- Last year you had to choose a photo first, and browse the designs by the small thumbnails in the card creator. Now, if you prefer, you can browse the large previews on cards.smugmug.com, choose your favorite, and make a card straight from there.
- Anyone can now order one of your finished card designs, whether they have a SmugMug account or not. However, only SmugMug subscribers can create their own cards, and they can only use their own images.
- The following HTML tags in photo captions will now be preserved in lightbox view when someone clicks on an image in your gallery to see it bigger:
<a><b><i><u><br><ol><strong><font><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><ul><li><em><div><span><center>
We hope this release makes for happy holidays!
All the best,
The SmugMug Family
EDIT 11/20: We’re hearing lots about wanting customers to be able to pick their own card designs and make them from your photos. We’re working hard on that but unfortunately don’t have a day to give you for when the feature will go live.
November 10th, 2009 at 4:39 pm
The answer may be staring me in the face, but I can’t seem to find the place to set prices for cards and how to get started. I switched to EZ Prints, but still don’t see cards anywhere. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks!
November 10th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Hi Jen, I sent you an email answer to your question. Thanks
November 10th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Tristan, rather than email a response to only Jen, it might help to have the reply answered here in order to assist others. Thanks!
November 11th, 2009 at 12:10 am
Yes, please can you email me the guidlines you sent Jen or post them? thank you
November 11th, 2009 at 4:30 am
Here’s what I told Jen:
To get to the cards pricing area (make sure you have a Pro account), navigate to the gallery of yours that you would like to price and using the Tools menu, choose ‘This Gallery – Set Prices’.
Make sure EZPrints is selected from the lab buttons at the top of the screen. Then, scroll down to the very bottom to find the Photo Cards pricing section. That’s all there is to it!
November 11th, 2009 at 6:37 am
Thanks – I’ve been able to set prices, but when I go in to try to Buy the cards (both on my public site as a client and logged in as myself), they don’t appear as an option in the shopping cart. I feel like I’m missing something here? Can anyone help?
November 11th, 2009 at 7:18 am
Never mind! I found it! This is an awesome upgrade. Thanks so much for everything you do. I’ve never questioned my partnership with smugmug!
November 11th, 2009 at 10:05 am
Existing galleries with Bay Photo printing
I assume that if we want to add cards to a gallery, and the existing gallery already is set up for Bay Photo, we need to swtich the whole gallery to EZ Print.
This would mean a different print experience if additional enlargements were ordered. Not sure the effect on pricing, since costs are different.
November 11th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Kathy,
I too cannot seem to find how a client would create a card? I have set the prices, but when I am viewing as a client and go to the client’s gallery, I cannot find any place where they would create and order a card. Help? I already have EZ prints selected…
November 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
@Duane – create the card, then put it in a gallery – for the client “The Smith Family Holiday Card” – then price that gallery for EZP Cards, only. More:
http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2009/11/11/how-to-sell-cards/
November 11th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Very nice, but there are a few bugs.
Once I chose a card and tried adding photos only about half of the galleries are available when clicking on “photos – Your Photos–> galleries slide out”
In my case only 8 out of 13 Gallery categories show. None of the galleries that don’t show are hidden or private in any way.
Clicking the help link to the right doesn’t work either as the link is malformed
http://smugmug.com/photos/photos.mysite.com/help/photo-greeting-cards/
So back to choosing my pictures first, adding them to a cart and then going for pictures….
Nice new designs though.
November 13th, 2009 at 9:14 am
Maybe I am missing something here. I will have to create the card for my client? I think it would be alot easier if I just took the pictures and posted them to my smugmug site. My client can then browse through their pictures and card samples and create their own card, while I am out taking more picutes. I look forward to creating my own card for the holiday season, but I don’t necessarily want to create cards for others. I have already scheduled several sessions to take pictures for Christmas cards. It sure would be nice to just post them and move on.
Thanks
November 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Kathy, or SmugMug:
I, too, have created my gallery for holiday cards and have set the prices for the holdiay cards without any problem (I love you SmugMug!!!!). However, after logging out and going into my gallery to check it out and buy a card, as if I were the client, the cards do not come up as an option for purchasing.
Kathy had the same problem and then found the answer… HELP???
November 13th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I have to agree with Pat above. My job is to take the pictures and upload them to a print service. The clients job is to select the pictures they like best and then select a card design. I can’t spend time designing all the possible cards with all the possible pictures to only sell one final design.
November 14th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Is there a facility to print return addresses on envelopes for client greeting cards?
November 16th, 2009 at 1:14 am
how do i find a nice card for wedding with studio pictures of bride & groom as the wedding card
November 16th, 2009 at 8:03 am
Great…I thought as I read all about the major card upgrade. I’ll try it out on a wedding I have just uploaded. Unfortunatly I feel it needs some more work on it for me to be able to use it in my business and for my clients. Others might disagree however my main thought is that as a pro photographer one of the reasons I love smugmug is that clients can crop and order the prints they require. This has been lost on the new cards option. My clients should be able to design their own cards directly from my uploaded images. At the end of the day the markup is only going to be small on this product and to spend time designing different cards, then having the client want to make alterations etc etc I don’t think its a workable option. Also the hassel of having to change labs to enable this option is a pain.
It’s a good idea guys but it needs abit of work. But hay what do I know I’m only a photographer…Ha Ha
Rgds Scott.
November 16th, 2009 at 8:04 am
With all of the customization for cards, it would be much easier to let the customer chose their style, custom text, etc.. without me having to go back and re-design it until they are happy. Cards, Calendars, etc should all be easy for customers to create themselves.
November 16th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
People – I think you’re missing the bigger point here! Huge improvement vs the PayPal process of before. I’ve been trying for two nights to get the PayPal button to work in my gallery – wasted time – and now I’m thrilled I can just have my clients order directly using the same process they always use for their orders. I get that it is an incremental step in the workflow, but seriously cannot take more then 5-10 minutes tops to read email from a client on what they want, create a card and post to a new gallery. So price it to make it worth your time!
SmugMug – great solve for this year!! Keep up the great work and continuous improvement!
November 18th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
What is shipping cost on the 4×8 flat cards? I do not have an answer for my client, cannot find it anywhere. Can somebody help a girl out?
)
November 18th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
RD – Since shipping cost vary due to weight & size I would just run a sample order. I don’t think they have set pricing.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
I don’t think I would call this a major upgrade. A major upgrade would be adding greeting cards to the purchase options available on my site for each photo I have posted, so my customers can select a photo, create a card, order prints, and pay me directly, without me having to do anything. I have to wonder why you haven’t implemented this instead.
November 18th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Fabulous! You guys always do such an amazing job! Thanks SmugMug!!
November 18th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
You sent someone instructions on how to price these cards, why dont you post it instead? I have no clue either how to price this stuff.
November 18th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Great upgrade, you guys are terrific!
Thanks for improving the options and making our life a little easier.
November 18th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Although I appreciate this as an added feature, I strongly urge smugmug to advance this to its logical conclusion and provide a system that allows the photograper’s client make his or her own cards. My clients are already doing that, taking their JPGs and going to Kodak Gallery, Shutterfly, Tiny Prints, Costco, etc. to make their own cards and quite inexpensively at that. There’s an important revenue stream being overlooked here and obviously the software already exists. If I were to build in my time as a service to produce and amend these cards, they would become prohibitively expensive, and therefore, self-defeating — why would anyone pay me to do this when they can do it themselves and have fun doing it? Since I’m not a graphic designer, nor do I wish to be, my layouts wouldn’t be much better than my client’s anyway.
November 18th, 2009 at 7:15 pm
@RD Photography: Cards ship at the same rates as our other products, here: http://cards.smugmug.com/prints/shipping.mg . So they’ll start at $4.95 for under $20 worth of cards, and add $2 for every extra $20 worth of cards.
2 boxes of 20 4×8 cards are ~$25, so they’ll cost $4.95 + $2 to ship.
Hope that helps!
-Anne
Support Hero
November 18th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
@ those requesting a guest card maker: We hear ya! Thanks very much for the feedback.
November 18th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
OK, these cards are beautiful. I am wondering though, when I go to my visitor view, it shows that in their “BUY” button is an option to create a card. Why would they want me to “design” it and put it in a gallery with a cost mark-up, when they could just design it themselves with a gallery photo for the cheaper price, what stops them from doing this?
November 18th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
It would be wonderful if a client could create their own book, calendar, cards, etc. from my site. I sell photos on a cd so my client can go some where else and create their books, cards, etc.. Please make these options available to the customers not the photographer.
November 18th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Hi.
I appreciate your hard work,
however, the ‘major’ card upgrade is totally useless in real world for photographers with many clients and low margins
Unless the clients can design the cards themselves with ‘create a card’ features that we (the photographers, pro account owners), can create the templates for, it’s a waste of time.
How can we charge competitive prices for cards, on an already high priced product plus adding the time that we need to put into it if we need to produce the cards ourself?
It is better to put it as, ‘We can’t do it yet, but we are working on it’
all I can offer my clients is: buy a download and go to shutterfly or cvs to do your card.
bye bye this holiday season.
u
November 19th, 2009 at 8:26 am
I’m having trouble making the cards using large file photos, when I put the photo in the card, I only have the option of making the photo larger…but with a larger file, it is alread zoomed in farther than I’d like. Do I have to upload smaller files to make it work?
Also, I have several gallery categories, and not all are showing up when I go to select different photos, and there is no scroll bar to pull them up.
thanks
November 19th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I can not see all my gallery categories. Am I doing something wrong?
November 19th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I mean in the card creation window, I should have specified. I am not able to access all of my galleries to make cards from.
November 19th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Ditto what everyone else is saying. I don’t need to be able to make cards for my clients…I need them to be able to make the cards. PLEASE fix this asap. This “Major Upgrade” is not a major upgrade. Seriously. This is getting ridiculous.
November 19th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I would love nothing more than having an option for my customers to create their own albums, calendars and Christmas cards. I have had a lot of families call me disappointed that with all of the wonderful options in SmugMug there was not an option for them to create their own Christmas cards. Adding this as an option for the customer would be the best option. I have loved using SmugMug and rave about it all the time to my photographer friends. But as said above I do not have time to be designing cards for my customers. I am sure with how great SmugMug is we will see that option soon! Thanks a head of time
November 19th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
PLEASE HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
First I will say I love the new cards and do not mind creating them for the customers this year, but hopefully next year the customers can create their own….Although—I am having a terrible time with loading one of the 5×7 cards to produce a Holiday Card for a client. All other cards load perfectly for creating the cards. However this particular card happens to be the one the client wants. It is the 8th card when you are selecting which 5×7 card to create in the Winter Holidays category. It is red, vertical orientation and has Peace Love and Joy on the front with a horizontal picture on the front and 2 large square pictures on the inside. I contacted smugmug this morning and was told empty my cache—did this with no changes—it just sits and spins saying wait….I let is do this for approx 2 hours with no loading. I contacted smugmug again indicating there is no change to the situation—I have not heard back….Is anyone else experiencing this with this card??
November 19th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Is there a way I can send (e-mail) customer a catalog of the cards designs available, so they can pick the one they want to use with their photo?
I just want to offer to my customers a family portrait package that includes christmas cards in the same price. Off course I wouldn’t like them to see how much the cards cost to me.
Thank you,
November 19th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Please consider having the customer create their own cards rather than the photographer playing middle man. I can’t spend the time doing this.. BOO HOO!!
I love the designs, but would rather price them and allow the customer to pick, choose, create and pay.
Thanks!!!
November 19th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
You need graduation announcement designs please!
November 19th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
This is my third request, as usual, no replies to my previous ones, for information on how to SET PRICES. You are quick to send me stuff in the mail and leave me “for your eyes” notes, but you don’t give info on how to set up pricing….WHY?
I need information on how to set up pricing and this is my third request!!!
November 19th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
I completely agree with all the others who would like to have their clients be able to create their own cards, calendars, and any other products that they would like on their own. Ironically I emailed Smugmug about that very issue this morning and received an email regarding the new “upgraded” ability for pros to offer cards to their clients for profit. When I looked this up and saw all of these post I was glad to see that I am not alone and would expect that Smugmug would be able to offer this revenue stream to the pro accounts. My clients are looking for speed and convenience…they don’t want to have to take a download or a disc someplace else to have cards and calendars made with photos that are right in front of them. They want a “one stop shopping experience” and so do I…we all make more revenue if they buy everything from us. I for one won’t be offering the holiday cards…I just don’t have the time to figure it all out, make it work and email back and forth with clients and make changes and get approvals…etc, etc, etc. I guess my clients will have to go somewhere else and that’s a shame.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
is there any chance you will be upgrading print size to accomadate panoramic prints at all, I am sure I am loosing clients because of it. I know you can do a 30x 10, but are you adding more. As I am sending my prints myself here for costumers.
If not it will only be a matter of time before I ditch this site.
Casey.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
@Tony, Ack! I’m so sorry – our primary vehicle for Help is our help desk, http://smugmug.com/help/emailreal where we have a team of Support Heroes to answer your questions fast. I’m going to also answer right here. Here’s how to get the cart into a gallery for the customer: http://blogs.smugmug.com/pros/2009/11/11/how-to-sell-cards/ and how to price it, is no different than any other item on SmugMug – here’s how to set prices: http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-pricing
please email us at the help desk if you have more questions on this, thanks – and sorry again!
November 19th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
For those looking to have cards available directly to clients, you are missing out on a potentially awesome marketing opportunity. Unless SmugmugPro comes up with a fab solution to automatically include your logo/info on the backs of cards, the pre-made templates are simply going to print as-is. With all the cards that our clients will be mailing out, wouldn’t you want each one to have your branding on the back? What’s a Hallmark card without the Hallmark logo on the back? Just another card.
Try creating a separate “cards” gallery using images of the cards. Then “show keywords” for each image and name each design with a number or an appropriate title. In the description, say how much the cards are, and include the relevant information on how to order by linking to your PayPal, Google Checkout, etc.
Once you receive the paid order, you’ll have the template # they want, the image #’s they want to use from their own gallery (based on the amount of openings in the templates), and you can then send your card design to BayPhoto or whomever else you work with.
Clunky, yeah…a little. BUT…you do get to design the card with your brand.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
This is the most disappointing and worthless upgrade a SM Pro could think of. It produces even more work and less convenience for the photographer. Sorry Smugmug, it looks to me you have waisted valuable time.
I’m not offering cards anymore. Way too much work and trouble.
November 19th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
@Olger, The card designs (to show your clients) can be found here: http://cards.smugmug.com/
November 19th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
Adding cards to your product offerings is really not that hard. All you have to do is make sure the gallery (you want to have cards for sale in) is set to use EZPrints instead of BayPhoto. Yes, BP offer cards on their own site too but if you want your clients to order it directly through their gallery, it looks like it will have to be EZP.
Then…while in the same gallery, go to Tools > Set Prices and price your cards accordingly.
November 19th, 2009 at 11:18 pm
Hi Folks,
Sorry to neglect the comments on this post for so long! I didn’t see them stacking up here. As always, it’s best to email our Support Heroes for immediate help but I’ll post responses here for everyone to see:
Re: Not seeing cards as an option in the shopping cart: Be sure the cards aren’t zeroed out in your Pro pricing, and that the gallery is set to EZ Prints. Also, we will only show these products as an option in the cart if you are adding a card-ready image to your cart. We check the resolution to make sure it’s 1200×2400 for a 4×8 or 2800×4000 for a 5×7 and only then show the appropriate products as available to purchase from the image.
Re: Some galleries not showing up when browsing for photos in the card maker: We are still looking into this, but this definitely sounds like a bug and we’ll get it fixed as soon as possible.
@Debbie: No, the envelopes arrive blank and we aren’t set up to do any labelling.
@Cindy: The “Create a Card” in the Buy menu is owner-only so your customers won’t see that option or the prices in the card maker. If/when we do allow guests to create cards, they would see your pro prices in the card maker.
@Nathan: If you’re having trouble not being able to zoom out on an image, that sounds like the slot for the particular design may have a problem, or the image is just a perfect fit to begin with. Would you email our Support Heroes and point them to your image and the card you’re trying to make? We’d really need to see that to be sure what was going on.
@Carrie: I’m sorry for the trouble with that particular card! It came up just fine for me, which does (unfortunately) imply that the trouble is probably a local to your cache. Do you have a different Internet browser that you can try on, by chance?
@Jim: Thanks for the request for graduation cards. We currently have 3 5×7 designs and 1 4×8 designs. You’ll find them in the “More” category in the card maker itself. I apologize if not all of the previews for these are up on cards.smugmug.com yet.
@Casey: Thanks for the feedback on panoramic sizes. Which sizes were you hoping for?
-Anne
SmugMug Support Hero
November 19th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
My suggestion to everyone: Make a digital download available to your clients of all your prints.. they can then download the image.. then refer them to Walmart or Costco where they can upload the image and order their cards much easier. Target, Walmart and Costco can do it. Smugmug can’t.
November 20th, 2009 at 4:42 am
I want my customers to be able to create their cards, collages, etc. from my smugmug website & pay me directly as well.
Also… Please add 8×10 sizes for collages. That’s the ONLY size that sports teams & pre-school customers want.
Thanks.
November 20th, 2009 at 6:40 am
I don’t understand why the other company (Bay-whatever) doesn’t offer cards as well. I want my customers to be able to make a card out of any image they want…so now I’ve got to go back and change my print company and re-price everything, I presume. Seems a bit silly to have to do that.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:11 am
Your 4×8 cards are still obscenely expensive, I charge my clients 1.00 per designed card (5o minimum) and get them printed with envelopes for .29 cents locally, for holidays local is important, because EZ prints ain’t and shipping ain’t cheap, another useless service (for me).
November 20th, 2009 at 9:49 am
I am having the same problem as Jenn Johnson. I can’t seem to get it to show up in my customer view under the Buy area.
November 20th, 2009 at 10:34 am
I love the idea’s and the designs. But i wish my customers could go on and make their own card. Is this going to be a possibility in the near future?
November 20th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I’m new to SmugMug. I can meet all of my first customer’s requests for prints except they wanted to make their own Christmas card. I have chosen Bay Photo to be the printer for the customer’s gallery and I really hate to have to change everything since my customer is in the process of deciding on prints. One down side to offering a digital download is that if they order a hi-res file at 4MP so that they can make their own card, they may also try to make large (like 24×30) prints from that file, costing me sales and making my photos look bad by printing from too-small digital files. I can e-mail the customer a digital file myself, but I still risk losing print sales by doing that.
So I too wish there was the option for the customer to select a photo from the gallery and order cards made from that photo directly from Bay Photo. Thanks for everything else though!
November 20th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@Mark (and many others!):
We are working hard on making it so customers can make their own designs from your photos and I’m sorry we didn’t have that when we released the card upgrade. I’d love to be able to tell you when we expect to ship it, but all I can say is we’re working hard on it.
November 21st, 2009 at 7:56 am
I love Smugmug (longtime customer) but it should simply be so much easier to do this. I appreciate the effort though and hope this all gets sorted out. Thanks!
Scott
November 21st, 2009 at 8:12 am
Yeah, not a perfect release, but welcome, none-the-less for the upcoming holidays and I appreciate it. And when you guys say your working hard on something I tend to believe it! When the customer is able to design and buy his own card this will be enormous and have a huge impact on sales. So hurry up! As we all know the patience of mankind has fallen off rapidly and will continue to in the future.
I had most of the confusions listed above and perhaps one more, some unfortunate might be struggling with out there. Before the pricing will work you must have a produced card listed in whatever gallery you’re trying to price for photo cards. In other words you will not see card pricing in your gallery until you have created a card and placed it in that gallery! Andy did mention this in a post above but it wasn’t clear enough for me (had some marbles in my head yesterday). I hope this helps someone and saves them some time. It frustrated me to the point of cursing smugmug $#%@##$, and I love smugmug!!!!
Thanks for the free gift Smugmug!
Tip
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I get it, you’re working hard. Hopefully it pays off.
Even if we had an option in the gallery that says “permit card building” and that provided enough database permission to let the customer build their own. This isn’t very useful if I have to build the cards. It’s nice, but not useful to my business.
November 22nd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
When is the deadline to order christmas cards? Is there an extra fee to rush orders and if so, how much is it?